


Odd Compliments

by Infiltrait0rN7



Category: Mass Effect
Genre: F/M, Fluff, Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-03-05
Updated: 2016-03-08
Packaged: 2018-05-24 19:00:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,844
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6163342
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Infiltrait0rN7/pseuds/Infiltrait0rN7
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Garrus and Shepard like to give each other compliments. Being the dorks in love they are, they tend to be rather odd compliments. Join them as they try to be friendly and romantic, but end up confusing and disturbing and quite possibly offending the living daylights out of each other!</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Cupcake

**Author's Note:**

> You've seen those "Daily Odd Compliments" floating around the Internet? Each chapter will be based on a different one.

“What is that?”

* * *

Shepard was sitting on the counter of the mess hall, swinging her legs and eating something, just about the time that Garrus decided to leave the main battery.

He found it rather strange. Not strange that Shepard was sitting on the counter – she seemed to scorn the idea of chairs, though why Garrus had no idea – nor that she was eating, as biotics did more often than most.

No, what was strange to Garrus was what Shepard was eating. It looked to be some sort of brown, sponge-like thing with a white squiggle decorating the top. And what’s more, it appeared to be oozing some sort of white goo from a hole in its center.

Garrus was slightly disgusted. He had seen Shepard eat a number of odd things since they’d met but this had to be one of the strangest.

* * *

“It’s called a cupcake, big guy.”

Garrus looked confused, which Shepard found rather cute. Not that she would tell him so.

“A cup… Cake?”

Shepard nodded, taking another bite of her snack.

“You know what a cake is, you’ve seen me eat it before. This is just a smaller version of that.”

It was Garrus’s turn to nod, now looking a little less disgusted than before.

“The cupcake’s chocolate, I’m guessing from the color, but what’s that white stuff leaking from it?”

Shepard laughed, hopping down from the counter as she finished the rest of the treat. As she walked away, Mess Sergeant Gardner immediately descended on the spot, wiping the leftover crumbs off the counter and glaring at the Commander’s back.

“Vanilla icing. Normally I’m not the biggest fan, but I haven’t had anything like that in a while, so it was really tasty.”

Lowering her voice, Shepard leaned toward Garrus. “I, uh, don’t suppose I could convince you to swipe me another one of those, could I?” She figured he’d do it anyway, but to really sell it she gave him her best puppy-dog eyes and even batted her eyelashes a few times.

Garrus chuckled, turning his gaze toward the kitchen where the cupcakes were stored. He knew he could probably just walk up and take one, but it was always more fun coming up with a plan first.

Shepard clapped, knowing she’d won him over.

“You know, Garrus, if you were a cupcake, I’d definitely eat you. And then I’d feel really guilty, knowing that I ate the best cupcake in the galaxy. And, obviously, that I ate my friend, as well.”


	2. Difficult (Also Known As Why Shepard Hates Chairs)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is set a few weeks before "Cupcake", shortly after Garrus joins the crew of the Normandy SR-2.

“Is that a listening device on my ceiling?”

* * *

 

For whatever reason, Commander Shepard (who was sleeping on the couch again – whoever decided that putting a skylight above the bed of a person who was spaced was a good idea could really use a nice punch in the face) decided to stare at the ceiling of her cabin instead of the fish tank as she usually did when she got tired of trying to sleep for the night cycle.

It was in staring at the ceiling for a few minutes that she noticed the small, black wire hanging loosely from the rafter.

She blinked.

It was.

* * *

 

All that could be heard from Shepard’s mouth at that moment was a low utterance of curses, mostly damning Cerberus and The Illusive Man to Heshtok. She first considered damning them to Hell but in light of Cerberus’s anti-alien stance she figured that was much too good for them – Hell was considerably lacking in vorcha, better to send them to Heshtok instead.

She quickly sat up, pushing the heavy duvet off her body and onto the couch as she swung her legs to the floor. Looking around, she figured the best course of action would be to stack a chair on the table so that she could stand on it and reach the bug from there.

A closer inspection of the chairs nearest Shepard’s position revealed that they were welded to the metal floor, not even a biotic Lift or Pull were strong enough to dislodge them from their spots (which she found strange, considering they could be used to move krogan). She briefly considered calling Jack up with the intercom, but a quick glance back at the skylight was all that was needed to dissuade her from that course of action.

Shepard’s next idea was even better: Call _Garrus_ up with the intercom. He was tall enough to rip the listening device out of the ceiling, especially with that reach of his… Then she thought better of it – he was the one who originally swept her cabin clear of bugs and he didn’t find this one. It’d probably turn out that she was just being paranoid and he would laugh at her. Or get mad that she called him up there so late over nothing.

_Plus_ , she thought, _he’d probably want to calibrate it first._

Bastard.

It was in thinking that that Shepard came up with her best plan yet, even better than the one where she decided to drown Udina in the water fountain the next time she saw him: She was going to stack her desk chair on the table and stand on that to reach the bug.

However, there were a few problems with this plan, mostly the part where her desk chair had wheels. But then Shepard figured that if she was really quick about it, it wouldn’t matter.

Walking up the short few stairs to her desk, Shepard took a moment to tap on her space hamster’s cage. “Wish me luck, Boo,” Shepard exclaimed, grabbing her chair and steering it towards her destination.

Naturally, Boo said nothing.

Deciding at once that she wanted to ride her chair down the steps, Shepard hopped on and miraculously managed to not fall flat on her face when the chair reached the bottom of the stairs.

She took this as a sign. Unfortunately, Shepard happened to be as bad at reading signs as she was at dancing and so what happened next shouldn’t come as a surprise.

First taking a moment to clear off – here meaning push onto the floor – the random piles of junk scattered across the table’s surface, Shepard placed the chair exactly where she wanted it and got into position to grab the bug and jump off. She didn’t want to fall, after all.

She could almost reach it from where she was, fingertips barely grazing the black wire when it happened:

The chair rolled backwards.

Shepard violently pitched forward, directly on top of the pile of things she had only minutes before thrown haphazardly onto the floor.

“Ow… I think I broke my arm.”

* * *

 

Despite his close association with humans over the past couple of years, Garrus had never been able to grasp the concept of time. At least, time as it related to human sleep schedules.

Which was why he just so happened to be right outside Shepard’s cabin when she fell.

Garrus knocked, once, twice, finally barging in when it became clear that Shepard wasn’t going to answer the door.

“Shepard?”

“Down here,” Shepard yelled from somewhere, sounding slightly muffled as she did so.

Garrus headed in the direction of her voice, expecting to see her sprawled out on the couch with a pillow over her head as usual. Instead, walking down the stairs he was greeted with the sight of Shepard in a crumpled heap on the floor, papers and less easily identified things scattered about her.

“Spirits,” Garrus mumbled, kneeling at Shepard’s side. Unsure as to the extent of her injuries but wanting desperately to touch her, he reached out his hand but thought better of it, letting it fall back to his side.

“What happened?”

Shepard moaned painfully, struggling to push herself up from the floor with her good hand.

“I think my right arm’s broken. I can’t move it at all.”

Garrus glanced over at the aforementioned limb, noting the unnatural angle in which it rested by Shepard’s side. _Definitely broken,_ he thought. _Have to get her to Chakwas._

After a moment’s deliberation, Garrus gingerly wrapped his arms around Shepard’s waist, pulling her up with him as he stood. Holding her with only one hand now, he carefully turned her body so that her injured arm would be cradled between them, sliding his other hand underneath her legs as he did so.

Now that Shepard was safely ensconced in his arms (and damn if he didn’t like the way it felt to hold her, not that he would tell her so), Garrus started making his way to the medical bay.

* * *

 

Dr. Chakwas was asleep at her desk when Garrus came in carrying a pajama-clad Shepard. Slightly surprised to see them at such a late hour (but not surprised to see them together), she hurried over to the pair to see what was the matter.

Garrus put Shepard down on the nearest bed, sliding off to the side so as not to get in the doctor’s way (he wouldn’t admit it, but Chakwas terrified him almost as much as Shepard did – though Shepard had never strapped him to a gurney, unlike the doctor – maybe even more so).

“What happened, Commander?”

In lieu of a response Shepard just stuck her arm out, wincing as she did so. Gently Chakwas took the proffered arm, turning it this way and that until she was satisfied with her examination.

“I’ll need to take an x-ray to see if it’s broken, although it certainly appears to be,” Chakwas said. “Now, you were telling me how this occurred, Commander?”

Shepard felt rather sheepish, wondering what would be the best way to explain what happened without making herself look like an idiot.

“Uh, there was a listening device on my ceiling. I was trying to get rid of it, but I slipped and fell instead.”

_There, that sounded reasonable,_ Shepard thought.

“I fail to see how that could have caused an injury like this,” Chakwas replied distractedly, engrossed as she was taking the x-ray of Shepard’s arm. “How were you able to reach the ceiling in the first place?”

Shepard laughed nervously, looking anywhere but at Garrus or the doctor.

“I, uh, stacked a chair on the table.”

Examining the x-ray now, Chakwas nodded. “That explains why your arm is broken. I’ll get a splint.”

No sooner had the doctor walked away than Garrus took her place at Shepard’s bedside.

“Shepard,” he murmured, “Why didn’t you come to me for help? I could have removed the listening device for you and you wouldn’t have gotten hurt.”

She couldn’t look at him; suddenly, her reasons for not asking for his help seemed silly.

“I didn’t want to bother you. I thought you might get angry at me because of it,” Shepard mumbled. “I don’t know what I was thinking. God, I’m such a screwup.”

Garrus shook his head. Despite what Shepard may have thought about herself, he didn’t feel that way about her at all.

“Sometimes you are the most difficult person to deal with,” Garrus responded lightly. “But other than that, I think you’re pretty perfect.”


End file.
